Although there are many definitions of smart cameras offered by the media, camera manufacturers and developers, still no binding definition exists. In a field where terms are often defined by their predominant usage, most material in this article is based on the term's most predominant usage. In the book "Smart Cameras",[1] a smart camera is defined as a vision system which, in addition to image capture circuitry, is capable of extracting application-specific information from the captured images, along with generating event descriptions or making decisions that are used in an intelligent and automated system.
A smart camera or "intelligent camera" is a self-contained, standalone vision system with built-in image sensor in the housing of an industrial video camera. It contains all necessary communication interfaces, e.g. Ethernet, as well as industry-proof 24V I/O lines for connection to a PLC, actuators, relays or pneumatic valves. It is not necessarily larger than an industrial or surveillance camera. "Having" a capability in Machine Vision generally means a degree of development such that these capabilities are ready for use on individual applications.
This architecture has the advantage of a more compact volume compared to PC-based vision systems and often achieves lower cost, at the expense of a somewhat simpler (or missing altogether) user interface.
Although often used for simpler applications, modern smart cameras can rival PCs in terms of processing power and functionalities. Smart cameras have been marketed since the mid 80s, but only in recent years have they reached widespread use, once technology allowed their size to be reduced while their processing power has reached several thousand MIPS (devices with 1 GHz processors and up to 8000MIPS are available as of end of 2006).
Having a dedicated processor in each unit, smart cameras are especially suited for applications where several cameras must operate independently and often asynchronously, or when distributed vision is required (multiple inspection or surveillance points along a production line or within an assembly machine).
A smart camera usually consists of several (but not necessarily all) of the following components:
A video output (e.g. VGA or SVGA) may be an option for a Smart Camera.
Smart cameras can in general be used for the same kind of applications where more complex vision systems are used, and can additionally be applied in some applications where volume, pricing or reliability constraints forbid use of bulkier devices and PC's.
Typical fields of application are:
Developers can purchase smart cameras and develop their own programs for special, custom made applications, or they can purchase ready made application software from the camera manufacturer or from third party sources. Custom programs can be developed by programming in various languages (typically C or C++) or by using more intuitive, albeit somewhat less flexible, development tools where existing functionalities (often called tool or blocks) can be connected in a list (a sequence or a bidimensional flowchart) that describes the desired flow of operations without any need to write program code. The main advantage of the visual approach Vs. programming is in a much shorter and somewhat easier development process, available also to non-programmers. Other development tools are available with relatively few but comparatively high level functionalities, which can be configured and deployed with very limited effort.
Smart cameras running software tailored for a single specific application are often called "vision sensors."[2]
"Having" a capability in Machine Vision generally means a degree of development such that these capabilities are ready for use on individual applications. In the factory automation field where terms are often defined by their predominant usage, "Smart Camera" is also commonly used to refer to a unit which includes all of the hardware (and sometimes an operating system) as a platform for the above, but which requires the addition of either machine vision software or more extensive code-type programming before it is ready to provide the described capabilities.